Another Quiet Week
February 18th, 2006 -- Posted in rants | No Comments »For friends who are wondering about my non-activity on this site, it has been a rather busy week at work. Yes, as usual, my excuse for MIA due to work is nothing new. Yet no, it’s not a normal week.
This week has been hectic when my second week at the new department started with news that I will be involved with the new year budgeting process this week, which I was told will be a very tedious process. That did not help much with the start of the week. To add to the already busy schedule, I was just ‘informed’ on Monday of a 2.5 days orientation workshop starting the next day on Tuesday! What the…?? I found out by accident that the agenda had already been distributed a week earlier… with my name missed out. Now try imagining the organizer panic, because that’s exactly what happened! My colleague who was supposed to share the budget work with me now had to work everything out herself. Try imagining her fury too…
I was fuming! 2.5 days of some orientation workshop which I could not miss as it will be marked as one of the most important pre-requisites for my onboarding, yet I will have to slog the next 1.5 days to make up for lost time. Clocking in at average 10 hours a day, this is definitely nothing close to the ‘Work Life Balance’ policy that the company advocate so much.
(Maybe that was only meant for the senior management… only which it will make sense.)
Cobie to cheer me up after my hard week at work…
So what happened to Valentine’s Day? Nothing exciting happened actually. Just something amusing… Tuesday, if you can remember I’d mentioned, was the first day of the 2.5 days oritentation camp. By popular request, there is no dinner program arranged on that day so we can arrange for something with our partners. Before I proceed with the ‘amusing’ story, I must spoil the highlight… I had already ordered for a vase of roses last week as a surprise for Sunsun on Valentine’s Day. The amusement of the story goes about how she received the flowers.
Nothing exceptional happened during the day. We merely exchanged “Happy Valentine’s Day” wishing and a kiss in the morning. Nothing else happened over the course of the day. That’s what bothered me! The vase of roses was arranged to be delivered in the morning to our apartment after she returned home. By noon, when she called but did not express any excitement over any vase or any rose for that matter, I got impatient but kept my cool. I wanted to call up the florist about the delivery but could not find time to do so.
By late afternoon, an hour before I the orientation program ends for the day, I called her and still no news of the flowers. By this time, she admit that she’d already knew I was up to something when she found an online florist URL on IE (not sure how she did that as I remember having cleared all history). What a bummer! Firstly, she has to find out (damn the online florist for having a URL so outright obvious!) and secondly, the delivery did not happen. DOUBLE BUMMER!
What about dinner? Before you make any chivary comment, please be informed that neither Sunsun or myself would allow ourselves being trapped in the consumer-oriented valentine’s day crowd at restaurants on February 14. No matter how we might have planned and spared extra charges for advance reservation, the crowd will still spoil the whole mood. So what did we do? We ended up at my Dad’s place, as usual, to have dinner with my sister Annie.
So where’s the story? Here’s the story… Just as we were heading home after dinner, we received a call. Guess who? Correct! The florist!!!
F&#@!!!
What nice timing! Delivering Valentine’s Day bouquet at 9pm in the evening? Forget it!.. Then again. I’ve paid for it and being an online transaction, I expected a receipt in the e-mail… but there was none. So I had no way of complaining. Shouting at the Indian delivery guy won’t help. It will only work when we raise it to the management. But alas, it was late and I was tired. I have not called and no energy to call over the long working days that follow.
Just a word of caution for the guys… Do not order Valentine’s Day gifts online to a receipient in Singapore. It is fine if your beloved one receiving the gift or flowers is residing abroad, but not when she’s in Singapore. It was fine whenever I ordered something for a receipient in USA. It was fantastic even in Thailand. The bouquet I got for Sunsun two years ago was HUGE and the flowers were fresh. In Singapore? Forget it! The delivery service in Singapore still need improvement. Your place is so far my arse! How big can Singapore be??? Compare that to the size of Australia and of USA, and grade the service here again.
Now somebody tell me why the service industry here should deserve tips…
